


you're so square (baby I don't care)

by lasttrainto



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 04:03:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20401375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasttrainto/pseuds/lasttrainto
Summary: Time is relative, Crowley reminded himself. Rome wasn't built in a day. Crowley did not need to remind himself about that part, as he had played a small but decisive role in the tortuously long process by inventing the concept of filing out forms in triplicate. Much like the M-25 orbital highway, it had not earned him a well-deserved wahoo, but he was proud of his achievement nonetheless.





	you're so square (baby I don't care)

Time is relative, Crowley reminded himself. Rome wasn't built in a day. Crowley did not need to remind himself about that part, as he had played a small but decisive role in the tortuously long process by inventing the concept of filing out forms in triplicate. Much like the M 25 orbital highway, it had not earned him a well-deserved wahoo, but he was proud of his achievement nonetheless. 

For a creature who had once slept through the entire 1930s (which he still referred to as his Depression nap), Crowley felt the passing of time quite keenly these days. With all the uncertainty that had invaded his tidy little life of late, each grain of sand in the proverbial hourglass felt like a boulder on his shoulders when he thought of what might happen next. The Big One might come at any time! Heaven and Hell might return at any second for their pound of flesh (and feathers)! Any moment might be their last! With 6000 years of moments behind them, and perhaps precious few before them, Crowley was determined to show Aziraphale how much he liked-- cared for-- lo-- wanted to play out a Shakespearean happy ending with him. No one dies, everyone gets married, lots of joyful sex is to be had. Hamlet, eat your heart out. 

"You go too fast for me, Crowley." Those words pulled him up short again, as they did so often since Aziraphale had first uttered them. Crowley did go fast: in cars, in crazed rants, into trouble headfirst. Betraying their respective sides and running away together across the stars did, in retrospect, seem like a big ask after 6000 years of slow seduction. Crowley had decided that a new tactic was needed: rather than stomping on the gas pedal of their relationship, he could brake himself down sharply to Aziraphale's speed. 

In a fit of deeply uncharacteristic forethought, he'd come up with a roster of carefully planned, carefully correct outings for angel and demon in tandem. Nothing too fast. All nice and slow. Nice and excruciatingly slow. Antony J Crowley, the Speed Demon Himself, grumbled inwardly at the thought. He glared out into the green and glistening foliage of the botanical garden he'd invited Aziraphale to, and the bushes around him began to shake in terror. His reputation among plants always proceeded him, and he liked it that way.

Still, he reminded himself, he had made good progress. There had been lunch at the Ritz and long afternoons bickering over wine at his flat, evenings at the symphony and a trip to an art museum that had left them both bemused and faintly horrified at the scope of things that humans would frame, hang and charge admission to see. Last Sunday, they had gone for a walk in the park, and their fingers had almost brushed as they strolled. Crowley fought down a blush, and then a rush of frustration. Demons ensnared and enveigled, they fornicated and freaked out and fucked around. Demons did not, he admonished himself sternly, blush. His heart, to the extent that he had one, was an icy void of infinite darkness not unlike the blackest of black holes, and his veins oozed thick with ichor and tar.

Aziraphale shot him a questioning look from beneath his lashes. Suddenly, the icy void was warm as spring, the blackest of black holes was lit with a ray of purest light, and the ichor and tar did something frankly nauseating that made him feel like he'd been tied in a knot. A warm, soft, freshly baked pretzel knot, much like the ones that Aziraphale was pointing toward at a little stall across the path. Crowley sighed and strolled over, trading folded bills for two pretzels and handing one to Aziraphale. He held onto the other, glaring it as if daring it to explain to him how he could possibly have come to identify with its soft, fluffy warmth in any way. 

"Don't grip it quite so hard, dear boy. You'll crush the poor thing to bits!" Aziraphale plucked the pretzel from his hand. Crowley let him: they both knew he'd just been holding it until Azirapahle finished the first one and wanted another. 

Aziraphale smiled delightedly up at him, and slipped his hand into Crowley's. Crowley blinked, slowly. His chest did a dozen frightening and elated things all at once. He had hoped for such success, but hadn't dared prepare for it. 

And because he hadn't prepared for success, he also hadn't prepared for Aziraphale to tug him in and press a soft, sweet kiss to his mouth. 

For a moment, Crowley froze. His black hole heart was busy sprouting a small sun, and it was somewhat distracting.

Aziraphale pulled back immediately, face lined with worry. 

"I, ah, apologize, my dear. That is, I'm terribly sorry if I misunderstood--" He pulled his hand out of Crowley's and stepped back, eyes averted as one apology tripped over the next. Crowley grabbed him by the sleeve, eyes desperately searching the angel's face as they both babbled.

"Angel, I'm not complaining, but if this is another one of those damn dreams again then for the love of Go- Sa- somebody, just kiss me again before I wake up."

Aziraphale continued heedlessly on, "Yes, terribly sorry, won't happen again...wait. Dreams? What dreams? What in Heaven's name are you talking about?"

Crowley shook himself. Letting on why he enjoyed sleeping so much, perchance to dream of Aziraphale... Well, that was a surefire way to go "too fast."

"I'm talking about that kiss, angel. Where in He-- on Earth did that come from?"

"I've wanted to do that for a quite a long while." Crowley goggled at him. Looking down swiftly, Aziraphale muttered, "But of course if that's not something that interests you, dear boy, there's no need to put yourself out on my account..."

"Of course it interests me! Why would you think it didn't?" Crowley crossed his arms, feeling frustration pressing at him like commuters catching sight of a 5:02 train.

Aziraphale glanced at him sidelong, considering. "Sometimes you're a bit...hidebound. Set in your ways. What is it the kids these days are saying? Ah, yes: 'square.'"

Crowley sputtered. " I-- what-- of all the-- Nobody says 'square' anymore!" 

"A good old fashioned, traditional hell-raising demon, then. I've always wondered whether something as humble and sweet as the joys of the flesh could interest you."

"I hate to break it to you, angel, but the 'joys of the flesh' isn't always so humble and sweet."

"But it _can_ be, my dear!" Aziraphale gesticulated decisively with his pretzel, showering Crowley's lapels with grains of salt. "It can be humble and grand and sweet and sharp and all sorts of delightful things, all at the same time. It can be whatever we want it to be." 

Behind his dark glasses, Crowley narrowed his eyes, searching. "What happened to 'you go too fast for me, Crowley?'"

"You _do_ go too fast for me. At times, it's quite terrifying." Aziraphale glanced up at him, another one of those beneath-the-lashes gut-punch glances, and smiled. "But often it's quite thrilling." His smile wasn't exactly wicked, per se, but it looked like it could make any number of wicked smiles blush with shame. Crowley blushed with another emotion entirely, feeling the whatever-it-was in his veins do yet another somersault and then head south, at speed.

"I'm trying, angel. I've been trying hard to go slower, for you." Crowley gestured around himself at the gardens, the lazy bumblebees, the buttery sunshine, the green and tranquil idyll. "Look at this! Slow and serene. Couldn't speed up if it tried." He sighed. "Same with the symphony, and the art museum, and all the other half-dozen outings I've cooked up. All tailored precisely to your speed."

"All these leisurely walks, these lazy evenings. All this was for me, you wily old serpent?"

"Well of course, angel! When have you ever known me to spend a month strolling leisurely through every green-leafed idyll in walking distance without at least one disco-fueled dance binge to balance it all out?"

"I thought perhaps the events of Armageddon had taken their toll on you, and this was your means of recovery! Battle fatigue, and all that!"

"This isn't me recovering! This is me romancing you!" Crowley sighed, and steeled himself. "I'm not in any rush, angel. I can be patient. I've waited this long, and I can wait however long you need. I'm willing to take a long walk through every garden in England if it means..." He blushed again, and cursed himself, and forced out the rest of the words, "if it means I get to hold your hand while we walk."

Whatever Aziraphale saw on Crowley's burning face made his gaze soften, and he reached out to take Crowley's hand again. "I've decided It's not so bad to go fast. Not when you're going somewhere good." He stepped an inch closer and pressed his other hand to Crowley's jaw, fixing the demon with an infinitely fond look. And Anthony J Crowley, the Speed Demon Himself, wasted no time stepping in and pressing their lips together. He wasted no time licking into Aziraphale's mouth, slicking his tongue against the angel's lower lip, winding his hands through the golden curls he'd so long wished to touch. 

If the angel made a tender, pleading sound, and the demon answered with a note of utter hunger, only the plants were there to hear them, and they knew better than to rustle a word of it.

At long last, Aziraphale pulled back, breathless and smiling a very wry, very well-kissed smile. "Time to leave the garden, my dear."

Crowley offered his elbow, and Aziraphale reached out to take it. They made their way back to the Bentley with a speed not technically possible given the existing pathways of the gardens, but none of the humans noticed, and none of the plants would ever tell. On the radio, Freddie Mercury crooned a tribute to the dearly departed King, who had not really left so much as sauntered vaguely westward. Over Crowley's traffic-induced cackling and Aziraphale's long-suffering fuss, you could almost hear Freddie sing, "You don't like hotrod racin', or drivin' late at night. You just wanna park where it's nice and dark, you just wanna hold me tight..."

Angel and demon were headed somewhere humble and grand and sweet and sharp, together, and all was right with the world. 

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to Queen's cover of "You're So Square (Baby I Don't Care)" and this happened. Does that make this a songfic? Do people even write songfics anymore? Guess that makes me the square one here.


End file.
